Playing House
by caffeineaddict13
Summary: But it doesn’t last forever. Not this love. Because it belongs to someone else. Bella/Jacob angst.


**A/N:** I really do need to get a hobby. Listen to Met a Girl Like You Once. Cause it makes me think of Bella and Jacob.

**Disclaimer:** Excuse me French, but _fuck_ no.

--

Bella made a choice. And in her clouded head it was the right one, the perfect one, the one she wanted to (and did) _die for._ But she is frozen in a state of unrest, in a state of indecision, in a guilty, lawless state that cut away her senses to leave her bloody and gutted in an empty house.

She acts like it's the easiest thing in the world. She lies—_always lying_—he calls her innocent and she smirks because she has to, because he _expects _it, but she knows it's really the truth. She is innocent and stupid and believes in love.

And she's young enough to think that it will be all she needs.

--

When she reads books, she chooses the ones with the simple plots. Girl meets boy, girl loves boy, girl marries boy, _and they live happily ever after_. Forever. Her forever is here and she doesn't know if this is how she wants to spend it.

She met her boy and loved her boy and married him, but what the authors that she admires don't write is that her boy is a 107-year-old monster, and her love is split in two.

And Alice can't even see her future anymore.

--

She thinks about it all the time: leaving. She thinks about when she hunts and when she runs and when they kiss; when she closes her eyes it's her and a suitcase and the road—it's Edward's face strained against tears that will never fall, and her dead heart pretending to beat.

And she tells herself its just a thought, but the image is clear and all it takes is one step and she will be _gone_, and she is so damn innocent but not so blind that she thinks it will be that _easy_.

--

She knows he sees it, too. She kisses with her eyes open now, and he does it sometimes, too, and looks into those two black dots deeply encased in red and gold and hard, burning, never_ innocent_ colors, and she sees it reflected in his. The doubt. The hope. The forgiveness. But then _she never said she was sorry_.

He holds her more and she is motionless, her vampiric qualities are the only things that matter to her, because the _humans_ leave, _humans_ doubt, but these cursed, endless creatures are in it not for life but millions of years past, and she had just assumed that their love wouldn't be _human_, either.

But it doesn't last forever. Not this love. Because it belongs to someone else.

--

The thing she hates the most is the cold. It's such a mocking sarcasm, this icy surface that is _always_ around her. It's suffocating; she can feel the heat beneath her tough skin that her fingers can't break (_no matter how hard she tries_), and the images never change.

His hot, dark, _different_ exterior that she always took for granted. She was always pale and fragile and glassy, and he was soft and hard and brown and beautiful. She can see it glowing beneath herself, it radiates from the stopped bloodflow in her heart, which still _exists_, even if it doesn't beat, it's real and forever trapped on a hot, jittering repetition that screams his name.

And there is nothing she can do about it.

--

Sleeping was always an escape. She had a theory about the speech, because in sleep she really let _go_, that's why it mattered so much—she let herself say what she couldn't during the day, and than make up excuses because she ignored it anyway.

She isn't sure whether she was glad she couldn't sleep anymore. Because she knows Edward would hear her say his name—and she doesn't know if she wants him to. Part of her; the mean, aching part that no one ever saw just wants to get it over with, because he can hear it inside her anyway, louder than her sweetened voice and edgeless footsteps.

But she knows that if he heard it, he would know, and she would have to admit that this was pointless. This game of house that they are always playing is stupid and futile and _useless_, because her lifeless heart doesn't belong to her _husband_. It never really had. It had always been _his_.

--

The day she left, the world seemed completely silent. It was just like she had imagined in her head, just like Alice had known it would be, and she was happy.

She felt a pang as she took one look behind her at her family that would always have a place in her, not just because her memory wouldn't _let_ her forget but because she _did _love them. Just not enough.

He let her back in like she had never left. Like nothing had changed. And she thought she felt her heart stutter, jump out to him. And he whispered _you are entirely the same_ with that smile on his face, and she was home. No more lying.

Finally.

--

**END**


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